In eCommerce, your product titles are the voice of your digital salesperson.  They need to specify what you offer and spark interest in shoppers. Here are some tips to make sure that voice is clear and persuasive.

In many ways, opening an ecommerce business is easier than a brick and mortar company.

You may choose a plug-and-play website platform or have one custom designed by us, but once your products are uploaded and payment gateway is set up, you’re ready to make money.

Or are you?

Eager to start selling, many ecommerce site owners rush through one of the most vital parts of the web store setup process: writing titles for their products.

Product titles are prime real estate when it comes to optimizing your site for search engines and shopping feeds.

They’re also the first thing potential customers see when scanning your site for a product that fits their needs.

Fail to craft a product title that supports your SEO efforts and captures shoppers’ attention, and you could miss out on a sale.

Here at Marketing 360®, our NLA Specialists are trained on the most up-to-date product writing strategies so they’re easy for humans to read and relevant in the eyes of search engine bots.

Want to tackle product title writing and optimization on your own? Keep reading or scroll through the infographic below for some of our favorite tips!

Think About The Goal

Product titles are your first chance to make a good impression on a potential customer.  The title needs capture their attention, evoke a positive emotion, and provide just enough information for them to know they’ve found what they’re looking for.

“When customers have questions about your products, it stops them from converting,” explains Jeff Breitenstein from BigCommerce.

For example, I was recently shopping for ski goggles that fit over prescription eyeglasses.  In my search, I found these are called OTG goggles.  I wear sunglasses, so I wanted a clear goggle lens.  This product title and description cover all those requirements:

 

On platforms like Google Shopping, your titles are a comparison tool shoppers use to determine if you have just the right product.  For example, I did a search for an “extra large Fedora hat”.  Notice how two product descriptions (on the right) get my attention:

 

Since I’m looking for an extra large, where do think I’ll click?

A Samsung case study found that 91 percent of the questions asked about products online concerned details not contained in the product title or description. Don’t leave your customers guessing!

Ask The Right Questions

By anticipating the questions your customers may have about a given product, and including (or at least implying) the answer in the product title, you increase your chances of a click and a purchase. When you sit down to write product titles, ask yourself:

• What is this?
• What is it made of?
• What shape/color/material is it?
• What is it for?
• Who is it for?
• What makes it special?

 

This will help you isolate the three most important features that should be mentioned in your title.

Keep It Simple

Ideally, you want a potential customer to know that they’ve arrived in the right place within two seconds of landing on your store or product page.

The first thing they’re going to look at is the title, and if it’s really long, full of confusing punctuation, or loaded down with lots of unnecessary information, they’ll click away immediately.  This title is too much:

 

Always refer to traffic data and the website design to help you decide what’s necessary and what isn’t.  Long titles on Google Shopping can work against you:

 

If thousands of people are searching by brand or product number, it’s important to put that info in your title.

If the website design makes it easy for shoppers to sort by gender, color, material, price, or country of origin (or this information is obvious thanks to the accompanying image) leave it out of the product title, and include it in the description instead.

Put Features In The Correct Order

When applicable, Google suggests that product titles be ordered as follows:

Brand + Gender + Product Type + Attributes (Color, Size, Material, etc)

 

If you’ve done your keyword research correctly, inserting search terms for which you want to rank should happen effortlessly during this step, further supporting your on-site SEO.

Feel free to play around with this order until you come up with a title that reads easily and makes sense at a glance.
If you’d rather leave product title optimization up to the experts, contact the Marketing 360 team today. Our NLA specialists would love to work with you to create product titles that boost your rankings and, most importantly, sales.